Any reader of this site knows I use the word "brilliant" promiscuously. I’m an enthusiast. Well this is a brilliant speech by John Mearsheimer at the Spy Museum yesterday in D.C., a panel hosted by IRMEP and picked up by antiwar.com. Note that Mearsheimer says that if he were killed in Israel tomorrow, there would be no accountability, witness the Liberty and Rachel Corrie. Note that he says that Goldstone was soft on Israel. Note that he says that the two-state-solution is a "charade." Below I excerpt his realist/strategic thinking re nukes, and the ways that Israel has used nukes as a form of coercion, to compel our compliance with its militarism.
(It’s my belief that Obama has backed off on settlements because of nuclear coercion: that Israel has blackmailed him by threatening to bomb Iran. But that’s just me, sitting in the woods.)
Mearsheimer:
I think a powerful case can be made that it made good strategic sense for Israel to acquire nuclear weapons in the 1950s and the 1960s…
Had I been a national security advisor to David Ben Gurion, I would have pushed him down the nuclear road, back in the 50s and the 60s….
The interesting question is "what should Israel do if Iran abandons its nuclear enrichment capability and agrees to a comprehensive inspections regime?" Would it then make sense for Israel to give up its nuclear arsenal? I think the answer to that question is not open-and-shut. But I think, on balance, a powerful case could be made or can be made that Israel would be better off abandoning its nuclear deterrent. ..
I think the Israelis understand full well that there’s significant pressure on Iran, there will eventually be significant pressure in Iraq, once we get out of there, especially if Iran develops nuclear weapons of its own, to get nuclear weapons. You can posit plausible scenarios as to how nuclear proliferation occurs in the Middle East over the next fifty years.
And I think it’s clearly not in Israel’s interest to have nuclear proliferation. I think given Israel’s conventional superiority number one, number two given its close relationship with the United States that’s not likely to change anytime soon. And given the dangers associated with proliferation, I think the Israelis would be better off in a nuclear-free Middle East. …
[In the 60s] it was not then in America’s interest for Israel to acquire nuclear weapons and it is not in our interest now for Israel to have nuclear weapons. This is why, as Grant described, President Kennedy went to great lengths to prevent Israel from acquiring nuclear weapons and to get them to join the NPT….
the two best examples that show how it’s not in our national interest are what happened during the 1973 war. During that conflict, the Israelis looked like they were in dire straits for the first few days. And they wanted the United States to immediately resupply them. The Nixon administration said "no" because the Nixon administration judged quite correctly that once the Israelis recovered from the initial surprise that they would do very well. And therefore the US government did not what to give the Israelis at that point more arms. The Israelis then threatened to pull the nuclear weapons out, and began talking about using nuclear weapons. That, not surprisingly, spooked the Americans who immediately began resupplying the Israelis even though they did not what to do that.
That’s a form of nuclear coercion.
From Israel’s point of view this was smart policy from our point of view it was not good. The second example is what’s been going on with regards to nuclear proliferation. It’s quite clear, and you see this from the recent review conference, that the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons again we’re not fooling anybody with this opaque rhetoric the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons is making it very difficult for the United States to stem the tide on proliferation and to move to a nuclear free Middle East. So again, it’s just not in our interest and it would have been much better if from our point of view we could have prevented Israel from acquiring nuclear weapons.
